Getting back to the U.S. (West Coast) from Porto (flight ideas)

Hi! You might consider a few days in Munich on your way back from Porto to Seattle.

Lufthansa/United has a new(ish) non-stop flight from Munich to Seattle. That direct flight isn't a daily departure, so you'd have to see how those days of week (3x/week, I think) work with the end of your Portugal tour, but it could be great.

Also Lyon, France is magnificent. It's a direct, 2 hour flight from Porto. There's no way I have found to get from Lyon > Seattle without at least one transfer, but it's not tricky.

1) Usually a multi-city ticket is less expensive than two one-ways. You might check SEA to LIS / xxx to SEA(where xxx is the city in Europe that you will fly home from) if you are able to amend the ticket you already bought.

I agree with the idea of taking a flight to a different city. I did this from Porto (I went to Madeira for a week and then flew from Madeira to London. When I was planning this, I looked at the Porto airport wiki page to see what cities were possibilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Airport

Easyjet, Ryanair, Transavia, Vueling, and TAP often have flights at good prices. See if any of the cities they serve look interesting.

Take a look at KLM. I think there are direct flights from Amsterdam. A few years ago we few Porto to Amsterdam, spent 3 nights in Haarlem and then flew home. Was lovely. A nice contrast to Portugal. There are so many smaller towns that you can easily train to Schipol airport in the Netherlands.
( I think we flew TAP to Amsterdam from Porto)

We did that tour last month and had planned to go by train to Santiago de Compostela and then to Madrid and flying home from MAD. We had to modify those plans and flew OPO to MAD and then headed home. When we changed plans, I did discover that somebody (United?) flies OPO to EWR, but for us it would have been a long layover for us in Newark, but perhaps not for you.

The major challenge that I see (as a Seattle resident) is getting back from parts of Europe in no more than one day.

Our corner of the country does have a smattering of nonstop flights to/from Europe. But, depending on where you begin the trip home, you may find the connections require you to overnight somewhere on the way (which is a deal-breaker for me).

If you are returning to Seattle from a major airline hub city that has nonstop flights to SEA (eg London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, and a few more), then you can get home in just one day. But if you begin your homeward flights from a smaller market airport, and especially if you are starting from central or eastern Europe, you may run into trouble - if it takes you a few hours to fly to (and connect through) one of the major European hubs, you may not get there early enough in the day to catch the nonstop to Seattle, and you may end up either needing to spend another night there, or you may have to fly to some city in North America - but if you have to connect in Toronto, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco or Los Angeles, you may arrive there too late to catch the last flight of the day to Seattle (forcing an overnight there).

Finding a way to get all the way home to Seattle in no more than one day can be surprisingly difficult - I like to travel to smaller places (recent examples include Corsica, Malta, etc.; upcoming examples include southern Italy, Greece, etc,). I often have to do a "positioning flight" to/near a major hub a few days before, or else I have to spend two days getting home (this is not an entirely bad thing - I get to add on some random, unrelated city or region at the end of my trip, so I can get home in one day...). It's one of the disadvantages of living in the far northwest corner of the US Airline systems. As a consolation, we are well-positioned for flights to Asia, so there's that.

It's tempting to leave the flight home as an afterthought to your trip plan (you figure: "go to the airport, fly home" but it quickly gets more complicated than that). For me, I figure out how to get home before I book my outbound flights. I start by looking at the airports that have nonstops to Seattle that leave relatively late in the day (there are only a handful of those). As suggested above, take a look at Munich (and Frankfurt), which have a lot of flights to SEA. Surprisingly, I have found Istanbul also works well (Turkish Airlines has afternoon departures nonstop to SEA that we like to take).

YMMV. Just part of living in the upper left corner as we do.

Porto to Frankfurt is a cheap and easy flight. Frankfurt to Seattle is a 10 hour nonstop, and the best way to get from the EU to Seattle. (That's the flight I use when I travel back and forth from Steilacoom. I've also done the FRA-OPO flights.)

Frankfurt is a good city for 2-5 days if you want to explore the area.

Another option would be to use Ryanair to Dublin and then fly home from there.

Try IcelandAir through KEF from Amsterdam. That will get you to SEA. Or Delta. Within Europe, Ryan Air is an option for getting you out of Porto to Dublin or Amsterdam. KLM has a daily nonstop to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco from Amsterdam and then you can easily get to Seattle from there.

Such great insight and advice - thanks everyone! After studying all this information, we have decided to focus on Dublin as a likely post-tour stop (and a place we have never been before). Munich and Frankfurt are especially tempting as first-time destinations for us, but we plan on a major German trip in 2026.

We will be booking something soon (including a short flight from Porto on Ryan Air or another carrier). The flight possibilities to SEA look promising on Aer Lingus.

Also we are leaving from Porto using Lufthansa/Discover. When we lived in Seattle we liked Condor, also a Lufthansa subsidiary. We decided to stay an extra day in Porto to get a better flight itinerary. It changes by day. Good Luck!